“We’re at War!” — And We Have Been Since 1776: 214 Years of American War-Making

“I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.” -President Theodore Roosevelt, at the turn of the century [1]

Islam is inherently more violent than other religions. This is the Supreme Islamophobic Myth. Yes, there are other core beliefs of Islamophobia (Islam is sexist, oppressive, discriminatory, the list goes on…), but nothing is more critical to anti-Muslim bigots than associating Islam with violence, war, and terrorism. This, in turn, is used to justify bombing, invading, and occupying Muslim countries–what I call the Supreme Islamophobic Crime.

We see this quite clearly in the jingoistic rhetoric against Iran, a Muslim country that is portrayed as being inherently violent and warlike. This is then flipped around, using the argument that we must attack them before they attack us.

The U.S., in the name of fighting terror, is waging seemingly Endless War in the Muslim world. The “We are at War” mentality defines a generation of Americans, with many young adults having lived their entire lives while the country has been “at war.” For them, war is the norm.

But if the future of America promises Endless War, be rest assured that this is no different than her past. Below, I have reproduced a year-by-year timeline of America’s wars, which reveals something quite interesting: since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence. In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars.

To put this in perspective:

* Pick any year since 1776 and there is about a 91% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year.

* No U.S. president truly qualifies as a peacetime president. Instead, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.”

* The U.S. has never gone a decade without war.

* The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression.

When we look at the present situation (see map above) and our violent past (see timeline below), is it not a bit hypocritical of us to point the finger at Muslims? Whenever I hear “good Judeo-Christian American patriots” telling me how violent Muslims are and how Islam supposedly endorses Perpetual War–I cannot help but think of how their own “Judeo-Christian nation” has been locked in perpetual warfare since its inception.

The U.S. was born out of ethnic cleansing, a violent process that had started long before 1776 and would not be complete until 1900. In other words, more than half of America’s existence (about 53%) has been marked by the active process of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population, which was ultimately all but destroyed.

If the Islamophobes insist that the Armenian Genocide, which took place in the span of eight years, defines the Ottoman Empire (which existed for over 600 years, meaning the Armenian Genocide lasted only 1% of its existence), then would they be consistent and use this logic to argue that the ethnic cleansing of the American Indians (which spanned more than a century and a quarter, or 53% of America’s existence) defines the United States? Or would they use it to demean Christianity overall as they do Islam? (Note: Benjamin Taghov has made this comparison on our website before; see here.)

By looking at America’s many wars throughout history, it becomes apparent that it is not radical Islam that propels the country to war. Rather, it is America’s trajectory of war and conquest, which has always been in the direction of expanding hegemony. In the start, the country expanded by occupying American Indian lands, portraying its indigenous population as inherently violent and warlike. In 1823, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall wrote: “The tribes of Indians inhabiting this country were fierce savages, whose occupation was war…” [2]

The American Indians were thought to be an existential threat to the United States (a classic case of projection or role inversion): John Quincy Adams, for example, wrote that “the savage Indians” were out to “wage an exterminating war” against the “peaceful inhabitants” of the United States [3]. It was the same message then as it is now: we must attack them before they attack us.

As Indian land was gobbled up by the use of force and fraud, the U.S. border expanded to the periphery of Mexico (which at that time consisted of most of the West Coast and Southwest of the modern United States). Hungry for this land too, the U.S. invaded Mexico, and “Mexicans were portrayed as violent and treacherous bandits who terrorized” the people [4]. American belligerence towards Mexico heated up in the 1800’s, culminated in the U.S. annexation of half of Mexico’s land (leaving right-wingers today to wonder “why so many Mexicans are in our country?”), and seamlessly transitioned into the Banana Wars of the early 1900’s.

Once the Americans had successfully implemented Manifest Destiny by conquering the land from sea to shining sea, the Monroe Doctrine was used to expand American influence in the Caribbean and Central America. Thus began the Banana Wars, a series of military interventions from 1898 all the way to 1934, which attempted to expand American hegemony to the south of its borders. America’s brutality in this part of the world is not well-known to most Americans, but it is well-documented.

During this time period, Hispanics were portrayed as “cunningly dangerous bandits” [5]. The Banana Wars came to an end in 1934 with the adoption of the “Good Neighbor Policy,” a policy that was adopted because “World War II was looming in Europe and Asia” and the U.S. wanted “to secure Latin American allegiances and hemispheric unity as a protection against foreign invasion” [6].

For a brief period, from 1935-1940, America rested from war, thanks to the emergence of isolationism during the Great Depression. But, with the start of World War II, the U.S. emerged as a super-power, ever hungry for more conflict. Thus began the Cold War period from 1945 all the way to 1991, with the U.S. fighting “the (exaggerated) menace of Communism” all over the world, even when it meant bombing, invading, and occupying countries that had done no harm to the U.S.

The Cold War had not even ended before the U.S. found its new target: the Middle East and the Muslim world. By 1990, the U.S. was already bombing Iraq in the First Gulf War–a country that the U.S. would go on to bomb for over two decades. Needing another boogieman now that the Soviet Union was dead, the U.S. turned to “radical Islam” as the enemy. And that’s why you have the map as it is above.

It should be noted that American plans to dominate the Middle East date back to at least the end of World War II, when it was decided that the region was of critical strategic value. Now that the U.S. has followed through on this plan, do you think “radical Islam” is really “an existential threat” just as American Indians were “fierce savages” waging “an exterminating war” against the “peaceful inhabitants” of the United States; or how Mexicans were “violent” and “terrorized” people; or how Central Americans were “dangerous bandits”? The rampant Islamophobia that abounds today is part of a long tradition of vilifying, Other-izing, and dehumanizing the indigenous populations of lands that need to controlled.

The objects of American aggression have certainly changed with time, but the primary motivating factor behind U.S. wars of aggression have always been the same: expansion of U.S. hegemony. The Muslim world is being bombed, invaded, and occupied by the United States not because of radical Islam or any inherent flaw in themselves. Rather, it is being so attacked because it is in the path of the American juggernaut, which is always in need of war.

* * * * *

Here is a graphic depiction of U.S. wars:

And here is the year-by-year timeline of America’s major wars:

[Note: This is a non-exhaustive list, and I purposefully excluded all sorts of military interventions so as to be very conservative; the list excludes, for example, “peaceful means” used to ethnically cleanse the land of American Indians, i.e. fraudulent treaties and other coercive means; it excludes many outright massacres of American Indians; it further excludes several instances of the U.S. landing troops in various countries to “protect American interests”; it also excludes virtually all CIA interventions and other covert wars; lastly, I may have omitted wars due to my own ignorance of them, although I am sure that readers will give their input so we can add to the list as needed.]